Battle in Baghdad

MILITARY ACTION: A U.S. helicopter prepares for landing Tuesday in Baghdad. U.S. fighter jets screamed over the city with unusual intensity and military helicopters hovered above Haifa Street. NAMIR NOOR-ELDEEN, REUTERS

BAGHDAD, Iraq - More than 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops, backed by Apache attack helicopters and F-18 fighter jets, battled insurgents all day Tuesday and late into the night in downtown Baghdad, in one of the most dramatic operations in the capital since the invasion nearly four years ago.

The fighting raged less than 1,000 yards from the fortified Green Zone, which houses both the American command and the Iraqi government.

U.S. and Iraqi officials said the assault on the Haifa Street neighborhood rooted out an insurgent cell that controlled the area, but residents of the predominantly Sunni Muslim area and Sunni leaders said the American forces had been duped by Iraq's Shiite-dominated security forces into participating in a plan to drive Sunnis from the area.

The conflicting accounts underscored the difficulty U.S. troops have in protecting civilians in this sprawling capital where Shiites and Sunnis are waging pitched battles for control of the neighborhoods.

With President Bush expected to order additional troops to Baghdad in coming weeks, Sunni Muslim leaders have worried that U.S. troops will end up helping the Shiites push them from their neighborhoods.

U.S. officials said Tuesday's operation wasn't aimed at any religious sect, but at insurgents who have controlled Haifa Street for months.

"It's an area that needed to be brought back under Iraqi security control," said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, a U.S. military spokesman.

Ali al-Dabaggh, a spokesman for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said the assault was part of an effort to reassert government authority in an area where insurgents had taken refuge with remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

"This area must be cleansed," he said at a joint news conference with Rear Adm. Mark Fox, a U.S. military spokesman. "God willing, Haifa Street will not threaten Baghdad security anymore."

Al-Dabaggh said former Baathists in the area "provided safe haven and logistics for" terrorist groups trying to destabilize Iraq.

Fox also defended the assault. "Anyone who conducts activities outside the rule of law will be subject to the consequences," he said.

Fifty suspected insurgents were killed and 21 were arrested, the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said. Three of those arrested were Syrian, the ministry said.

Many Baghdad residents refer to Haifa Street as the capital's "Fallujah," a reference to the Sunni city in Anbar province that became a haven for al-Qaida in Iraq until U.S. Marines retook it in a bloody assault in October 2005.

The street was handed over to Iraqi forces last February in an effort to pave the way for an American exit. But it remains one of Baghdad's most heavily contested neighborhoods, where bodies bearing signs of torture are found nearly every day.

Sunni residents said the fighting began Saturday.

On Monday, residents said, gunmen from the Mahdi army militia of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr pushed into the area, but were beaten back by armed Sunni residents.

At dawn on Tuesday, Iraqi troops began to surround the district, and residents said they took up arms to defend themselves against what they took to be Shiite-dominated forces.

But the residents soon realized that the troops were backed by the Americans, so they laid down their arms, opened their doors and waited, said Abu Mohammed, 47, a university lecturer who lives on Haifa Street. By 6 p.m., the troops had pulled out and the neighborhood was calm.

"What they wanted to do was hit us back," said Abu Mohammed, who asked not to be further identified for security reasons. "They went to the Americans and told them, 'These are terrorists, and you must come with the government to detain them.'

"We are afraid that this quiet is the quiet before the storm," he said.

Also Tuesday, 40 bodies were found throughout Baghdad. The Ministry of Defense announced the arrest of Abdullah Kadhem Jadi, a commander of the 20th Revolution Brigades, and Ibrahim Hussein Aanizan, a suspected leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

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